Monday, July 31, 2006

First there was HAARP messing with the ionosphere - now it is an electronics company wanting to provide blanket wi-fi coverage!

Atmospheric broadcasting

'The layer of the atmosphere known as the ionosphere, at an altitude of 50 kilometres, is already used as a radio reflector, bouncing low frequency radio signals from one side of the world to the other.

Researchers at Samsung in Korea are now working on a way to turn the ionosphere into an antenna. A patent application filed by the company reveals plans to direct higher frequencies radio signals, at about 1 gigahertz, at the ionosphere, to alter its behaviour.'

Interestingly odd....Tom Horn is a conservative Christian conspiracist who believes that biotech may be paving the way for the re-creation of angel-human hybrids or “nephilim,” and that Bush is controlled by demons. Horn runs raidersnewupdate.com and his novel The Ahriman Gate is a cross between Left Behind, Stargate, the X-Files and Lovecraft.Biotech, Demons and Stargate:

Thursday, July 27, 2006

An article on CNN (although this has been posted by several web sources recently) titled 'Surfing the Web with nothing but brainwaves' discusses the recent developments in producing brain chips that can interface directly with computers without the need for any cables, etc:

"Already, the Brown researchers say, this kind of technology can enable a hooked-up human to write at 15 words a minute - half as fast as the average person writes by hand. Remember, though, that silicon-based technology typically doubles in capacity every two years.

So if improved hardware is all it takes to speed up the device, Cyberkinetics' chip could be able to process thoughts as fast as speech - 110 to 170 words per minute - by 2012. Imagine issuing commands to a computer as quickly as you could talk."

Wednesday, July 26, 2006

NPR Radio has a podcast on the Transhuman debate titled 'Man-Machine Merger Arriving Sooner Than You Think' - again this subject is generally weighted towards top-heavy US thinkers such as Kurzweil which, much as I follow his thinking and applaud some of his though, I still feel lacks a true grasp of human potential and the spirit.

Sunday, July 23, 2006

Today I was looking over an archive - as a chance read. And I felt it was something worth repeating again here, especially since de Chardin's writings are still so relevant:

Monday, September 27, 2004

A true anecdotal story:

A seeker once went to visit a well-known Teacher. After having been permitted to attend an audience with the Teacher, the aspiring seeker asked if he could be permitted to join the circle of disciples. The Teacher replied that he wasn't yet ready. "You need to do more preparation" casually remarked the modern Teacher. "What should I do?" inquired the despondent seeker.

"Read more science-fiction" came the reply. There was a little confusion on the seeker's face!

Much of what is nowadays being discussed in terms of our human evolution has appeared, in various forms, over the last century among scattered science-fiction novels; some more well-known than others. Such ideas have indeed been scattered into the consciousness of many readers through such means. A reading of many sci-fi classics will throw-up a thread of such major ideas, as have been discussed by such notables as A.C. Clarke; O. Stapledon; H.G. Wells; T. Sturgeon; R. Heinlein...amongst others.

There have also been other spheres of exposure. For example, what Teilhard de Chardin was writing about once seemed like, and to some still does seem like, science-fiction - yet it was a deep philosophy. Now such ideas are making a comeback, a resurgance. Chardin's ideas proved to be integral to such cultural theorists as Marshall McLuhan (famous for coining the phrase 'global village' back in the 60s). Again, I will leave a few poignant quotes here - all taken from de Chardin's 'Let Me Explain' (Fontana, 1974):

- 'but if on the contrary man sees a new door opening above him, a new stage for his development; if each of us can believe that he is working so that the universe may be raised, in him and through him, to a higher level-then a new spring of energy will dwell forth in the heart of earth's workers. The whole great human organism, overcoming a momentary hesitation, will draw its breath and press on with strength renewed.' (: 5)

- 'In us the world's evolution towards spirit has become conscious. Our perfection, our interest, our salvation as elements can depend therefore on nothing less than pushing this evolution forward with all our strength. We may not yet understand exactly where it is taking us, but it is absurd for us to doubt that it is leading as towards some end of supreme value.' (: 60)

- 'no longer only, as of old, for our little individuality, our little family, our little country-no longer indeed only for the whole earth-but for the salvation and success of the universe itself, how should we modern men best organise the maintenance, distribution and progress of the energy of man around us? Therein lies the whole question.' (: 61)

- 'an irresistible and irreversible technical-cultural organization... is manifestly in progress of development within human society. On the other hand, as an effect of co- reflection, the human mind is continually rising up collectively-collectively, because of the links forged by technology-to the appreciation of new dimensions' (: 72)

- 'Nevertheless there are certain precise conditions in the field of energy that must be satisfied by the event we anticipate (a more pronounced a wakening in man, as it comes closer, of the 'zest for Evolution' and the 'Will to live'); and from these we are forced to conclude that all ultra-reflection coincides with a final attainment of irreversibility. (: 73)

The beauty of Teilhard de Chardin is that he talks about the collective, unified soul of humankind as a 'conspiracy' of individuals who 'associate themselves to raise to a new stage the edifice of life. The resources we enjoy today, the powers and secrets of science we have discovered, cannot be absorbed by the narrow system of individual and national divisions which have so far served the leaders of the world.' (:67)

'“Magic” mushrooms really do have a spiritual effect on people, according to the most rigorous look yet at this aspect of the fungus's active ingredient.

About one-third of volunteers in the carefully controlled new study had a “complete” mystical experience after taking psilocybin, with half of them describing their encounter as the single most spiritually significant experience in their lifetimes.'

Well, the 'academy' is finally catching up with the wave of the 60s from Leary, Castaneda, RA Wilson, Tart, Grof, and many others...

The spirit is ripe for activation: the triggers may only be different this time.

The Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies has a post called 'The Near Future of the Metaverse' which discusses the future convergences between physical/virtual reality, artificial intelligence and human-embedded technology. It also examines future scenarios of mind-implants to plug a person directly into an interactive 3D-virtual world:

"Every citizen on the planet can be on the net anytime, anywhere with very high speed wireless connections accessed via brain implants (direct brain to net interfaces). Instead of “reading a web page” users will enter a 3D, fully immersive VR Metaverse with total sensorial stimulation indistinguishable from physical reality. Most work and entertainment will take place in the Metaverse.

When? I think 2030 but let’s make it 2050 to have a solid long-term forecast."

Whilst there are many forecasts like this roaming the Web, and have been for many years - not to mention sci-fi - the output from The Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies has generally been of high quality.

A BBC article titled 'Virtual worlds to test telepathy' discusses how a virtual world has been designed at the University of Manchester in order to test human telepathy - a meeting of science-technology and matters of the spirit(?):

'Pairs of participants enter separate virtual rooms in the game and try to select which virtual object they think the other is interacting with.

The designers of the system say it overcomes some of the problems associated with real world studies.

Critics of previous tests say they are easily manipulated to create an effect that looks like telepathy but is not.

"By creating a virtual environment we are creating a completely objective environment which makes it impossible for participants to leave signals or even unconscious clues as to which object they have chosen," said Dr Toby Howard, one of the team that designed the system. '

"A new study suggests that consumerism and individualism may prove a more dominant force by 2025 than caring about the problems of poverty at home and abroad. It found that, for the first time since 1994, Britons regard looking after themselves as more important to quality of life than looking after their communities."

A future of more intense consumerism...? Is this a U-turn away from collective intelligence and participatory culture?

If this is so, its a kind of future I won't be interested in fuelling.

Wednesday, July 05, 2006

I have already mentioned Seth Lloyd's recent book 'Programming the Universe: A Quantum Computer Scientist Takes on the Cosmos' - yet here is a review of it in American Scientist Online:

"Seth Lloyd appears to be exaggerating when he claims in his informative and entertaining new book that he "advocates a new paradigm" by postulating the universe to be a machine that processes information. However, in the book, which is titled Programming the Universe, Lloyd does somewhat distinguish himself from his predecessors by focusing on the weird world of quantum computation. He lucidly explains what quantum computation is all about, how the process of quantum entanglement seems to involve an instantaneous exchange of information between locations that can be light-years apart, and why this phenomenon unfortunately cannot be exploited to transmit information faster than light. He also describes how quantum computers would be able to solve certain problems much faster than their traditional counterparts."